Ron Farmer (6 March 1936 - 11 June 2022)

It's sad to report the death of another of Coventry City's iconic players from the 1960s, Ronnie Farmer. Ron who was 86 and had been in a nursing home for some time, passed away on Saturday.

Ron was a key player in the club’s rise from Division 4 to Division 1 between 1958 and 1967 and was one of only four players to appear for the club in all four divisions of the Football League (George Curtis, Brian Hill and Mick Kearns were the others).

A skilful half back with excellent passing skills, he was signed from Nottingham Forest in November 1958 and was an important member of the team promoted from Division Four that season. Over the next seven seasons Ron was a virtual ever-present in the side with his main strength being winning the ball and feeding his forwards with penetrating passes. He also had a penchant for scoring long-range goals and taking penalties and during his City career he missed only one out of 23 spot-kicks.

Born in Guernsey in 1936, Ron was evacuated from the Channel Islands to Birmingham a day before the Nazis invaded the islands in 1940. After returning to the island five years later he made his name at the North Athletic club and later attracted the interest of Nottingham Forest. Along with his elder brother Bill (a goalkeeper) he moved, aged 16, to the mainland to try and carve out a professional football career. Bill was ten years older than Ron and won a first team place at the City Ground soon after arriving. He went on to play 58 games for Forest between 1953 and 1956 before joining Oldham Athletic.

Ron had stiff competition for a first team place but finally got his chance in January 1958 against Gillingham in the FA Cup. In the same Forest team was Scots-born winger Stewart Imlach, someone whose path would cross with Ron again later. Forest were a newly promoted First Division team, managed by the legendary former Villa player Billy Walker, and Ron had the chance to play nine league games against top opposition that season.

In the summer of 1958 Forest signed former Manchester United wing-half Jeff Whitefoot and Ron was restricted to reserve team games. In November of that year City manager Billy Frith signed him in a £6,000 double deal with goalkeeper Arthur Lightening and he went straight into the City first team in a 5-1 home win over Chester. Nemo in the Coventry Telegraph wrote: 'After a quarter of an hour feeling his way, Farmer settled down to a polished display of wing-half play and soon achieved complete understanding in midfield with (Paddy) Ryan'. His first City goal came in a 3-2 home win over Crewe when he netted from just outside the penalty area. The signings of Farmer and Lightening were a major boost to the club’s Division Four promotion hopes and Ronnie played in 26 successive games as City finished runners up and were promoted to Division Three.

                                   Ron in 1958

In 1959 brother Bill joined him at Highfield Road on a free transfer from Worcester City but failed to win a first team place. Ronnie, on the other hand, blossomed in the higher league. The half-back line of Kearns-Curtis-Farmer became the lynchpin of the team in the early 1960s and although Jimmy Hill successfully converted Mick Kearns into a full-back, another stalwart Brian Hill became the regular right-half.

Hill arrived at Highfield Road in November 1961 at a time when Ron was on the injury list and quickly assessed the squad he had inherited. In early March Ron returned to first team action but Jimmy had largely decided the major surgery required to the playing staff and it seemed that Ron wasn't part of his longer term plans. Jimmy had his eyes on Ards winger Willie Humphries and wanted to offer Ron in part exchange for the Northern Irish winger.

A few years ago Ron described what happened: ‘I had not played for the first team under Jimmy but he called me in and said how did I fancy a move to Ireland, I want to sign Humphries and I'd like to offer you to Ards? I told him that he hadn't seen me play and anyway I didn't fancy a move to Ireland. Whenever we met he reminded me that he was going to sell me before he’d even see me play’.

Ron played in every game until the end of the season and his performances, including five goals in the last seven games, convinced Hill that he was worth keeping. In 1962-63 he was a regular at wing-half but youngsters Dietmar Bruck and Brian Hill were snapping at his heels and the manager preferred Bruck in the latter stages of the memorable FA Cup run meaning Ron missed out on the big games with Sunderland and Manchester United.

In August 1963 he became the only City defender to score a hat-trick when, against Crystal Palace at Highfield Road he scored two penalties and a stunning 35-yard free-kick past a dazed, future City goalkeeper Bill Glazier in a 5-1 victory. Farmer was ecstatic but he recalls that Jimmy Hill wasn’t impressed. Ron explained : ‘it was tradition that if you scored a hat-trick you got to keep the match ball but when I asked JH for the ball he said that because I scored two penalties it wasn’t a proper hat-trick!’ That season he played 44 league games and scored 11 goals – eight from penalty kicks – as City won the Third Division title and was voted City's Player of the season.

Ron was entrusted with taking spot-kicks soon after Jimmy Hill’s arrival in 1961 and over the next five seasons he missed only one out of 23 attempts – that was at Millwall in 1964 when a win would have virtually clinched promotion from Division Three. Farmer, worried that goalkeepers were rumbling his strategy of always hitting the ball to his right, hit the spot-kick towards the other corner but, although goalkeeper Alex Stepney was helpless, the ball hit the post and bounced to safety and the game ended 0-0. His nonchalant penalty-taking style fooled many goalkeepers. The kicks may not have been powerful but they were always deadly accurate in their execution. Ron went on to take a further eleven penalties for the Sky Blues and never missed another and holds the club record for most penalties scored.

In 1965-66 the Football League introduced substitutes and Ron became the first City player to be substituted after fracturing his cheekbone in a collision with Manchester City's Johnny Crossan and was replaced by Bruck. City missed out on promotion by one point but Ron had another excellent campaign.

In the 1966-67 Division Two promotion season there were signs that 31-year old Ron was slowing up but he played 34 games however an injury cost him his place to Brian Lewis and he missed the final memorable run-in. The club’s defence, with Curtis, Hill and Kearns still going strong, was the team’s strength and the key factor in the 25-match unbeaten run. Ronnie managed two goals, a trademark penalty in a 4-2 Boxing Day win over Rotherham and a 30-yard free-kick which ‘slithered’ past Norwich’s goalkeeper in a 2-1 home win.

The 1966-67 Second Division Champions. Ron is 2nd from left middle row.

Ronnie remembered having a stinker in the opening game at home to Hull: 'I misplaced so many passes that I fully expected to be substituted. Nothing I did came off and I was crap but I kept running and tackling. Before the next game we had a team-talk and JH went round the room asking us how we thought we had played. I told him, "I was surprised you didn't take me off, I was hopeless", he replied, "you kept running, you kept tackling and you blocked some passes, all that was wrong was your passing and the rest of your game was fine, so I wasn't going to take you off".

In 1967 as Ron reached the milestone of 300 games for the club Jimmy Hill paid him a tribute, ‘The ironic thing is that towards the end of my first season here, he was hit by injuries and I contemplated giving him a free transfer because I had not had a real chance to see what he could do – and he was being barracked by the crowd. Afterwards I kept telling people he was our most accurate player. It is a wonderful performance by him and he has really earned his testimonial.’

In the First Division Ron played just four games, all away from Highfield Road, taking his total appearances for the club to 315. He had the honour of returning to Forest’s City Ground as a Coventry player and was one of City’s eleven heroes in a memorable 3-3 draw. One of his greatest regrets was not playing a home game in the top flight. In October 1967 he signed for Fourth Division Notts County on a free transfer. His move however cost County a few bob as Jimmy Hill insisted that they paid Ron his reward for foregoing his Coventry City testimonial. He rejoined old friends Stewart Imlach (coach at Meadow Lane) and Billy Gray (his former Forest manager) and spent two happy seasons in the twilight of his career.

In 1969 he joined non-league Grantham but soon after was lured back to Highfield Road as youth team coach. He led an outstanding crop of young players to the FA Youth Cup final in his first season including Dennis Mortimer, Bobby Parker and Alan Green and although the final was lost to Tottenham Ron was feted as a good coach. In November 1971 however he was sacked as manager Noel Cantwell brought in Tony Waiters as his Director of Coaching, three months later Cantwell and Waiters would lose their jobs.

A disillusioned Ron went to Massey Ferguson where he worked in the factory alongside several other ex-City stars and played and coached an excellent works team. He continued to live in Coventry after retiring and was one of the first members of the Former Players Association when it was formed in 2007. He continued to attend home games up until the start of this season, ironically his final game was the Forest home game.

                    Ron pictured at Legends Day 2009 (4th from left)

He leaves three children, Justine, Adam and Matt.

Jimmy Whitehouse (19.9.1934- 5.5.2022)

It is sad to report the death of former Coventry City forward Jimmy Whitehouse at the age of 87. The tall, blond scheming inside forward was a star of Coventry’s famous 1963 FA Cup run when, as a Third Division club, they reached the sixth round in a blaze of glory and started Jimmy Hill's Sky Blue Revolution. Jimmy scored six goals in nine games in the weather interrupted campaign, a record in the club's time in the Football League.

He was one of the five new forwards that Jimmy Hill signed in the summer of 1962 when he revamped the team, the kit and the whole face of the club. He started slowly as far as goals were concerned but when the FA Cup came around he turned into an ace goal-getter, somewhat similar to Keith Houchen 24 years later. An injury in the summer of 1963 meant he missed the start of the 1963-64 campaign and when he recovered he couldn’t win his place back from Ernie Machin and played only nine more games in Sky Blue. In March 1964 manager Jimmy Hill sold him to Millwall for £4,500.

Jimmy Hill with his five new forwards in 1962. Whitehouse, Willie Humphries, Hugh Barr, Terry Bly and Bobby Laverick.

He had been signed on a free transfer from Reading, where he had a five-year career scoring 67 goals in over 220 games. He grew up in Greets Green in the Black Country he joined his local team West Brom as an amateur and had six years at the Hawthorns without ever quite making the first team. The Baggies were one of the top teams in the country in the mid 1950s and went close to achieving the double in 1954, winning the FA Cup and finishing second in the league. Jimmy had to move down to Third Division Reading to make a name for himself. A fee of £250 took him to Elm Park and he scored on his debut for the Biscuitmen in August 1956 and was first choice inside forward for the next six seasons. Never a prolific scorer he did manage all four goals in a 4-0 win over Gillingham in 1958 and two goals in a 4-2 home win over Coventry the following year.

A free transfer brought him to Highfield Road in 1962 and he made his debut in the new Sky Blue kit in the opening day 2-0 victory over Notts County. By the time the First Round of the FA Cup came round Jimmy had scored two league goals and two in the League Cup but he notched the only goal in the home win over Bournemouth

In the Second Round a 0-0 draw at Millwall brought the South London side back to Highfield Road for a replay and Jimmy was on target along with Hugh Barr as the Sky Blues progressed 2-1.

In 2004 Jimmy told me the story of the Cup campaign:

‘It was the winter of the big freeze and there was virtually no football from Christmas until the first week in March. Our third round game at Lincoln was postponed sixteen times and when the thaw finally came we ended up playing six Cup games in three weeks.’

City, who prior to the freeze had been in a strong league position, just four points behind leaders Peterborough, romped home 5-1 at Lincoln with Jimmy netting after just 15 seconds - one of the fastest goals in the club's history. The victory earned a plum tie with Second Division Portsmouth a week later. A late Ken Hale goal gave City a fortunate 1-1 draw at Fratton Park and three days later a pulsating replay ended all-square.

Jimmy recalled, ‘I scored two goals in the replay and we were 2-0 up and looked home and dry but Pompey scored twice in the second half to take it to extra-time. We had to play the second replay at Tottenham's White Hart Lane and I can remember the amazing vocal support the City fans made. Ron Saunders put Pompey ahead but Terry Bly equalised and I scored the winner and we won 2-1’.

Six days later Second Division leaders Sunderland were humbled in front of a cup-crazy 40,000 Highfield Road crowd with many others getting in free after some gates were broken down. They saw the Sky Blues win a thriller 2-1 with late goals from Dietmar Bruck and George Curtis and earn the plum draw, a home tie with Manchester United.

Five days later in front of a capacity 44,000 crowd City’s run ended as they lost 1-3 to Matt Busby’s star-studded team that included Bobby Charlton and Denis Law.

Jimmy had scored nine goals in six FA Cup games to add to his nine league goals and played some of the best football of his career but it was not sufficient to win promotion for the club. The concertinaed cup run had taken too much out of the players and a tired City slipped to finish fourth.

In 2004 he told me: ‘Jimmy Hill was very good to me and I have some fond memories of Coventry and the football club. Those Cup ties were unbelievable and I can remember them as if they happened yesterday.’

His former playing colleague Dietmar Bruck recalls Jimmy fondly: 'At eighteen I was the youngest player in the 1963 team and he always encouraged me and gave me advice. I remember him telling me not to worry about making mistakes as that was how you learnt. He was a true gentleman and when we met up at Legends Days we always reminisced about the great times under JH'.

                        Pre-season 1963, Jimmy between John Sillett and Mick Kearns.

After losing his place to Machin Jimmy played only 10 games for the Sky Blues in 1963-64, scoring three goals including two goals in the 2-2 away draw with his old club Reading in January. In March 1964 he joined Millwall and although he scored a brace on his home debut he could not save the Lions from relegation to Division Four. Jimmy and his wife moved back to the Reading area In 1964-65 he played 33 games and scored 15 goals before moving on to non-league football with first Hillingdon Borough and later Hastings United and Andover. He worked for an engineering company in Reading after hanging up his boots and moved to Tilehurst near Reading. Later he indulged his love of betting by becoming a part-time on-course bookmaker and he could often be found at Oxford and Reading greyhound tracks. He joined the Former Players Association at its inception and was a regular at Legends Days until his health deteriorated. Jim suffered from Parkinson's and dementia and lost his wife Olive during Covid. He leaves a daughter Sharon and grand-daughter Lucy.

                                  Jimmy Whitehouse with me in 2009.

Sharon told me that her dad loved his time at Coventry and spoke fondly of Jimmy Hill and George Curtis and the family atmosphere at the club.

His funeral will take place at Reading Crematorium, All Hallows Road, Reading RG4 5LP on Thursday 30th June when the lives of Jim and Olive will be celebrated.